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Philosophy
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A note about the importance of diversity... The VSU MFT program curriculum and faculty members place a strong emphasis and value on diversity. We feel that mere tolerance of difference is not sufficient—we set a higher standard for our students. We believe that the differences that make up the rainbow of humanity must be embraced and cherished. As Mary Catherine Bateson reminds us, it is contrast—relationship to “otherness”—that makes learning possible. Students learn that problems and attempts to solve problems make sense when viewed through contexts such as age, culture, environment, ethnicity, gender, health, physical ability, nationality, race, religion, sexual orientation, spirituality, and socioeconomic status. These are the things that give shape and meaning to clients’ lives. The notion that these contexts are embedded in more encompassing cultural contexts of privilege, power, subjugation, and susceptibility infuses the entire curriculum. Through coursework, practica, and internships, we emphasize the way these contexts inform human experience and meaning systems, giving rise to multiple perspectives. The relationship between diversity and the variety of dominant cultural discourses such as ageism, classism, racism, sexism, heterosexism, and gender are woven throughout the fabric of our curriculum. MFT faculty members strive to explore with our students the ways that cultural and institutionalized discrimination exacerbate the treatment issues that clients present. They also examine the ways that issues of diversity and discrimination shape the context of therapy. By the time students graduate from our program, we believe they are able to situate themselves in the relational web of issues—class, privilege, and disenfranchisement—that are always at work in the therapy room. In addition to attending to issues of diversity in therapy, the MFT program attends to issues of diversity in the classroom. We work hard to assemble a diverse student body. We have students who are grandparents and students who have not yet begun to build families. We have students who are well traveled and those who have not strayed far from home. We have students who are active in religious communities and those who do not claim a faith. We have gay and straight students, affluent students and those who seem to keep their cars together with hope, bailing twine, and duct tape! We have students who have owned businesses, raised families, and returned to school for a second career and those who have traveled straight from high school through undergraduate school to our program. The complex ways that students bring diversity to the classroom is intrinsically immeasurable. Nonetheless, below, we offer a snapshot of two measures of our student diversity. This information about the race and gender of our student body comes from a 2005 semester and reflects a most basic measure of gender and racial diversity found in our classrooms and clinical practicum. |